Phone hacking scandal deepens

[Jan Klimkowski]

Why was this evidence of who gave PI hacker Mulcaire his orders withheld from police in the first place?

Phone hacking: Met wins access to Glenn Mulcaire statement

Police win high court order to see statement naming those Mulcaire says ordered him to hack phones at News of the World

Lisa O'Carroll
guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 July 2012 17.33 BST

The Metropolitan police has won a high court order giving detectives access to a statement in which the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire names those who he says ordered him to hack phones at the News of the World.

Justice Vos said at a high court hearing on Monday that it would be wrong if Met officers investigating alleged crime at the now-defunct Sunday paper were "kept in the dark" while investigating "serious allegations" of wrongdoing.

Vos added that there was "plainly a public interest" in the investigation of potential crime and although Mulcaire was "one brick in a very large wall", the statement should be handed over.

After a supreme court ruling earlier this month, Mulcaire was compelled to answer questions posed by lawyers for a phone-hacking claimant, PR consultant Nicola Phillips, about who instructed him to hack her phone.

Ordering disclosure of the statement to the Met, Vos said: "It would be most unfair if the police investigating these serious activities should be held in the dark."

The court was told that Mulcaire "names names" in his witness statement handed over to Phillips's lawyers on 20 July. Lawyers for phone-hacking claimants feared that Mulcaire would say he could not remember who at the News of the World ordered him to hack phones and this is the first time it has been revealed that he identified individuals.

"He answered the questions naming names, rather than saying I don't remember," said Vos. "The Mulcaire statement does contain positive information which may be of some benefit to the police investigation."

However, in a second order Vos banned phone-hacking victims from knowing the contents of this witness statement in a bid to stop it leaking out. He said he was concerned that if it went to a potential 400 claimants, it would come out accidentally.

But he ordered that the Mulcaire statement could be seen by lawyers acting for phone-hacking victims.

He reminded all present in court that a contempt of court offence was in place if the contents of the Mulcaire statement was leaked by anyone including press, claimants and lawyers.

"In many more normal cases the cat may be, as one might say, out of the bag," he said, noting that an informal arrangement not to mention anything in relation to the contents of the Mulcaire statement in open court had created an effective wall of confidentiality.

The hearing was the seventh case management conference on hacking in relation to at least 50 new claims being made against News International.

Earlier on Monday the court heard that claimants had made new allegations against News of the World publisher News International, which the company said it believed were "unsustainable". These allegations were related to "exemplary damages" claims but were not identified in court.